@phdthesis{Aretz2019, author = {Aretz, Sarah}, title = {Entwicklung und Evaluation eines Testinstruments zur Untersuchung von Vorkenntnissen und Pr{\"a}konzepten in der Kosmologie}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42542}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-425421}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 133}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Kosmologie beschreibt die Entwicklung des Universums als Ganzes. Kosmologische Entdeckungen in Theorie und Praxis haben daher unser modernes wissenschaftliches Weltbild entscheidend ge­pr{\"a}gt. Die Vermittlung eines modernen Weltbildes durch Unterricht ist ein h{\"a}ufiger Wunsch in der naturwissenschaftlichen Bildungsdiskussion. Dennoch exis­tieren weiterhin Forschungs- und Entwicklungsbedarfe. Kosmologische Themen finden sich h{\"a}ufig in den Medien und sind gleichzeitig weiter vom Alltag entfernt, so dass sich hier besonders leicht wissenschaftlich inkorrekte Vorstellungen entwickeln k{\"o}nnen, die zu Problemen im Unterricht f{\"u}hren k{\"o}nnen. Das Ziel dieser wissenschaftlichen Arbeit ist es, zu diesem Forschungsgebiet beizutragen und die Voraussetzungen hinsichtlich vorhandener Vorkenntnisse und Pr{\"a}konzepte in Kosmologie, mit denen Sch{\"u}lerinnen und Sch{\"u}ler in den Unterricht kommen, zu untersuchen und anschließend mit denen anderer L{\"a}nder zu vergleichen. Dies erfolgt anhand einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse eines offenen Fragebogens. Auf dieser Grundlage wird schließlich ein Multiple-Choice Frage­bogen entwickelt, angewendet und evaluiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen große Wissensl{\"u}cken im Bereich der Kosmologie auf und geben erste Hin­weise auf vorhandene Unterschiede zwischen den L{\"a}ndern. Es existieren ebenfalls einige teils weit verbreitete wissenschaftlich inkorrekte Vorstellungen wie beispiels­weise die Assoziation des Urknalls mit einer Explosion, der Urknall verursacht durch eine Kollision von Teilchen oder gr{\"o}ßeren Objekten, oder die Vorstellung der Ausdehnung des Universums als neue Entdeckungen und/oder Wissen. Des Weiteren gab nur etwa jeder F{\"u}nfte das korrekte Alter des Universums oder die Ausdehnung des Universums als einen der drei Belege der Urknalltheorie an, w{\"a}hrend fast 40\% keinen einzigen Beleg nennen konn­ten. F{\"u}r den geschlossenen Fragebogen konnten gute Hinweise f{\"u}r verschiedene Validit{\"a}tsa­spekte herausgearbeitet werden und es existieren erste Hinweise darauf, dass der Fragebogen Wissenszu­wachs messen kann und damit wahrscheinlich zur Unter­suchung der Wirksamkeit von Lerneinhei­ten eingesetzt werden kann. Auch ein entsprechendes Modell zur Verst{\"a}ndnisentwicklung der Aus­dehnung des Universums zeigte sich vielversprechend. Diese Arbeit liefert insgesamt einen Forschungsbeitrag zum Sch{\"u}lervorwissen und Vorstellungen in der Kosmologie und deren Large Scale Assessment. Dies er{\"o}ffnet die M{\"o}glichkeit zuk{\"u}nftiger For­schungen im Bereich von Gruppenvergleichen insbesondere hinsichtlich objektiver L{\"a}nderverglei­che sowie der Untersuchungen der Wirksamkeit von einzelnen Ler­neinheiten als auch Vergleiche verschiedener Lerneinheiten untereinander.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Ata2016, author = {Ata, Metin}, title = {Phase-space reconstructions of cosmic velocities and the cosmic web}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403565}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xi, 155}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In the current paradigm of cosmology, the formation of large-scale structures is mainly driven by non-radiating dark matter, making up the dominant part of the matter budget of the Universe. Cosmological observations however, rely on the detection of luminous galaxies, which are biased tracers of the underlying dark matter. In this thesis I present cosmological reconstructions of both, the dark matter density field that forms the cosmic web, and cosmic velocities, for which both aspects of my work are delved into, the theoretical formalism and the results of its applications to cosmological simulations and also to a galaxy redshift survey.The foundation of our method is relying on a statistical approach, in which a given galaxy catalogue is interpreted as a biased realization of the underlying dark matter density field. The inference is computationally performed on a mesh grid by sampling from a probability density function, which describes the joint posterior distribution of matter density and the three dimensional velocity field. The statistical background of our method is described in Chapter "Implementation of argo", where the introduction in sampling methods is given, paying special attention to Markov Chain Monte-Carlo techniques. In Chapter "Phase-Space Reconstructions with N-body Simulations", I introduce and implement a novel biasing scheme to relate the galaxy number density to the underlying dark matter, which I decompose into a deterministic part, described by a non-linear and scale-dependent analytic expression, and a stochastic part, by presenting a negative binomial (NB) likelihood function that models deviations from Poissonity. Both bias components had already been studied theoretically, but were so far never tested in a reconstruction algorithm. I test these new contributions againstN-body simulations to quantify improvements and show that, compared to state-of-the-art methods, the stochastic bias is inevitable at wave numbers of k≥0.15h Mpc^-1 in the power spectrum in order to obtain unbiased results from the reconstructions. In the second part of Chapter "Phase-Space Reconstructions with N-body Simulations" I describe and validate our approach to infer the three dimensional cosmic velocity field jointly with the dark matter density. I use linear perturbation theory for the large-scale bulk flows and a dispersion term to model virialized galaxy motions, showing that our method is accurately recovering the real-space positions of the redshift-space distorted galaxies. I analyze the results with the isotropic and also the two-dimensional power spectrum.Finally, in Chapter "Phase-space Reconstructions with Galaxy Redshift Surveys", I show how I combine all findings and results and apply the method to the CMASS (for Constant (stellar) Mass) galaxy catalogue of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). I describe how our method is accounting for the observational selection effects inside our reconstruction algorithm. Also, I demonstrate that the renormalization of the prior distribution function is mandatory to account for higher order contributions in the structure formation model, and finally a redshift-dependent bias factor is theoretically motivated and implemented into our method. The various refinements yield unbiased results of the dark matter until scales of k≤0.2 h Mpc^-1in the power spectrum and isotropize the galaxy catalogue down to distances of r∼20h^-1 Mpc in the correlation function. We further test the results of our cosmic velocity field reconstruction by comparing them to a synthetic mock galaxy catalogue, finding a strong correlation between the mock and the reconstructed velocities. The applications of both, the density field without redshift-space distortions, and the velocity reconstructions, are very broad and can be used for improved analyses of the baryonic acoustic oscillations, environmental studies of the cosmic web, the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovic or integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Dall'Aglio2009, author = {Dall'Aglio, Aldo}, title = {Constraining the UV background with the proximity effect}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-38713}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2009}, abstract = {After the epoch of reionisation the intergalactic medium (IGM) is kept at a high photoionisation level by the cosmic UV background radiation field. Primarily composed of the integrated contribution of quasars and young star forming galaxies, its intensity is subject to spatial and temporal fluctuations. In particular in the vicinity of luminous quasars, the UV radiation intensity grows by several orders of magnitude. Due to an enhanced UV radiation up to a few Mpc from the quasar, the ionised hydrogen fraction significantly increases and becomes visible as a reduced level of absorption in the HI Lyman alpha (Ly-alpha) forest. This phenomenon is known as the proximity effect and it is the main focus of this thesis. Modelling the influence on the IGM of the quasar radiation, one is able to determine the UV background intensity at a specific frequency (J_nu_0), or equivalently, its photoionisation rate (Gamma_b). This is of crucial importance for both theoretical and observational cosmology. Thus far, the proximity effect has been investigated primarily by combining the signal of large samples of quasars, as it has been regarded as a statistical phenomenon. Only a handful of studies tried to measure its signature on individual lines of sight, albeit focusing on one sight line only. Our aim is to perform a systematic investigation of large samples of quasars searching for the signature of the proximity effect, with a particular emphasis on its detection on individual lines of sight. We begin this survey with a sample of 40 high resolution (R~45000), high signal to noise ratio (S/N~70) quasar spectra at redshift 2.12.3. In spite of the low resolution and limited S/N we detect the proximity effect on about 98\\% of the quasars at a high significance level. Thereby we are able to determine the evolution of the UV background photoionisation rate within the redshift range 2 2, these baryons can be detected via the absorption of light (originating from more distant sources) by neutral hydrogen at temperatures of T ~ 10^4 K (the Lyman-alpha forest), at lower redshifts only about 20 \% can be found in this state. The remain (about 50 to 70 \% of the total baryons mass) is unaccounted for by observational means. Numerical simulations predict that these missing baryons could reside in the filaments and sheets of the cosmic web at high temperatures of T = 10^4.5 - 10^7 K, but only at low to intermediate densities, and constitutes the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). The high temperatures of the WHIM are caused by the formation of shocks and the subsequent shock-heating of the gas. This results in a high degree of ionization and renders the reliable detection of the WHIM a challenging task. Recent high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate that, at redshifts of z ~ 2, filaments are able to provide very massive galaxies with a significant amount of cool gas at temperatures of T ~ 10^4 K. This could have an important impact on the star-formation in those galaxies. It is therefore of principle importance to investigate the particular hydro- and thermodynamical conditions of these large filament structures. Density and temperature profiles, and velocity fields, are expected to leave their special imprint on spectroscopic observations. A potential multiphase structure may act as tracer in observational studies of the WHIM. In the context of cold streams, it is important to explore the processes, which regulate the amount of gas transported by the streams. This includes the time evolution of filaments, as well as possible quenching mechanisms. In this context, the halo mass range in which cold stream accretion occurs is of particular interest. In order to address these questions, we perform particular hydrodynamical simulations of very high resolution, and investigate the formation and evolution of prototype structures representing the typical filaments and sheets of the WHIM. We start with a comprehensive study of the one-dimensional collapse of a sinusoidal density perturbation (pancake formation) and examine the influence of radiative cooling, heating due to an UV background, thermal conduction, and the effect of small-scale perturbations given by the cosmological power spectrum. We use a set of simulations, parametrized by the wave length of the initial perturbation L. For L ~ 2 Mpc/h the collapse leads to shock-confined structures. As a result of radiative cooling and of heating due to an UV background, a relatively cold and dense core forms. With increasing L the core becomes denser and more concentrated. Thermal conduction enhances this trend and may lead to an evaporation of the core at very large L ~ 30 Mpc/h. When extending our simulations into three dimensions, instead of a pancake structure, we obtain a configuration consisting of well-defined sheets, filaments, and a gaseous halo. For L > 4 Mpc/h filaments form, which are fully confined by an accretion shock. As with the one-dimensional pancakes, they exhibit an isothermal core. Thus, our results confirm a multiphase structure, which may generate particular spectral tracers. We find that, after its formation, the core becomes shielded against further infall of gas onto the filament, and its mass content decreases with time. In the vicinity of the halo, the filament's core can be attributed to the cold streams found in other studies. We show, that the basic structure of these cold streams exists from the very beginning of the collapse process. Further on, the cross section of the streams is constricted by the outwards moving accretion shock of the halo. Thermal conduction leads to a complete evaporation of the cold stream for L > 6 Mpc/h. This corresponds to halos with a total mass higher than M_halo = 10^13 M_sun, and predicts that in more massive halos star-formation can not be sustained by cold streams. Far away from the gaseous halo, the temperature gradients in the filament are not sufficiently strong for thermal conduction to be effective.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schmidt2000, author = {Schmidt, Robert W.}, title = {Cosmological applications of gravitational lensing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-0000261}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2000}, abstract = {In dieser Arbeit benutze ich den Gravitationslinseneffekt als ein Werkzeug, um zwei recht unterschiedliche kosmologische Fragestellungen zu bearbeiten: die Natur der dunklen Materie in Galaxienhalos und die Rotation des Universums. Zuerst untersuche ich den Mikrolinseneffekt in den Gravitationlinsensystemen Q0957+561 und Q2237+0305. In diesen Systemen scheint das Licht eines Quasars durch die Linsengalaxie hindurch. Aufgrund der Relativbewegung zwischen Quasar, Linsengalaxie und Beobachter verursachen kompakte Objekte innerhalb der Galaxie oder dem Galaxienhalo Helligkeitsfluktuationen des Hintergrundquasars. Ich vergleiche die am 3.5m Teleskop des Apache Point Observatory zwischen 1995 und 1998 gewonnene Lichtkurve des Doppelquasars Q0957+561 (Colley, Kundic \& Turner 2000) mit numerischen Simulationen, um zu untersuchen, ob der Halo der Linsengalaxie aus massiven kompakten Objekten (MACHOs) besteht. Dieser Test wurde zuerst von Gott (1981) vorgeschlagen. Ich kann MACHO-Massen von 10^-6 M_sun bis zu 10^-2 M_sun ausschliessen, sofern der Quasar kleiner ist als 3x10^14 h_60^-0.5 cm und MACHOs mehr als 50\% des dunklen Halos ausmachen. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit stelle ich neue Beobachtungsdaten fuer den Vierfachquasar Q2237+0305 vor, die am 3.5m Teleskop des Apache Point Observatory zwischen Juni 1995 und Januar 1998 gewonnen wurden. Obwohl die Daten bei veraenderlichen, oft schlechten Seeing Bedingungen und grober Pixelaufloesung aufgenommen wurden, ist die Photometrie der beiden helleren Quasarbilder A und B mit Hilfe von HST-Beobachtungen moeglich. Ich finde ein Helligkeitsmaximum in Bild A mit einer Amplitude von 0.4 bis 0.5 mag und einer Dauer von wenigstens 100 Tagen. Dies zeigt, dass in der Linsengalaxie der Mikrolinseneffekt stattgefunden hat. Im abschliessenden Teil der Arbeit benutze ich dann den schwachen Gravitationslinseneffekt, um Grenzen fuer eine Klasse von rotierenden Kosmologien vom Goedel-Typ zu ermitteln, die von Korotky \& Obukhov (1996) beschrieben wurde. In Studien des schwachen Linseneffektes werden die Formen von tausenden von Hintergrundgalaxien vermessen und gemittelt. Dabei werden kohaerente Verzerrungen der Galaxienformen gemessen, die von Massenverteilungen im Vordergrund oder von der grossraeumigen Struktur der Raumzeit selbst verursacht werden. Ich berechne die vorhergesagte Scherung als Funktion der Rotverschiebung in rotierenden Kosmologien vom Goedel-Typ und vergleiche diese mit der oberen Grenze fuer die kosmische Scherung gamma_limit von 0.04, die in Studien des schwachen Linseneffektes gewonnen wurde. Dieser Vergleich zeigt, dass Modelle vom Goedel-Typ keine groesseren Rotationen omega als H_0=6.1x10^-11 h_60/Jahr haben koennen, wenn die Grenze fuer die kosmische Scherung fuer den ganzen Himmel gilt.}, language = {en} }